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I'm having trouble finding a bow shackle that will fit through the tie down recovery points on my '06 Forester, the 3.2T shackles that came with my vehicle recovery kit are too large to fit through the holes. I'm looking for other options as I'm reluctant to buy anything smaller with a lower rating, as a shackle is definitely not the first thing I want to break!

I'm wondering if soft shackles might be a better option for our cars. Even the cheapest ones are rated at BS of around 14T, and of course there's the advantage of not having metal flying around should something go wrong, especially considering Subaru tie down recovery points are not the strongest.

Brand I'm looking at is 'Gatorjaw'. Website says they're good for recovery use.

The two great things about soft shackles is that they don't present any mass to fly off and injure someone in the event of failure, and they are quite easy to make yourself.

A couple of bucks worth of dyneema, a diamond knot and a simple bury splice.

I have two concerns regarding their use on std Subaru metal-plate with hole type recovery points:
1/ chafe on the sharp edges - can be mitigated with some chafe cover
2/ the very small bend radius reduces the breaking strength. It should be at least 1:1 (bend radius / line diameter) to preserve the line breaking strength. at least 6mm radius (assuming you've used 6mm line for the shackle). The standard recovery points present about a 3mm bend radius if that.

I'm actually quite alarmed that none of the suppliers of these things mention the dangers of small bend radius. They certainly don't seem to take as much care as arborist or climbing gear suppliers, for example.